“Sitting up straight is a good place to start,” Mrs Brooks said. “You look more grown-up already.”
I waited until she went back to the file and the jabbering then leaned to the side to see better. I so wanted Mum to see me. And even though there was a playing field and the school walls and window between us, Mum turned her head, as if she knew I was looking, as if I’d called her name. She turned. She waved. Not like she was saying goodbye, but like she was saying Hello, it’s me again.
“Did you want to ask something?” said Mrs Brooks, seeing me with my arm in the air.
“No,” I said. And then, “Can I go to the toilet?”
Mrs Brooks looked out of the window over her shoulder. She didn’t see Mum; she didn’t see anyone there.
“Be quick,” she said.
My heart pounded as I passed the loos. My breathing was so loud and fast I thought that everyone could hear me, but I didn’t even look up to see if anyone in the office saw me go out of the doors at reception.
Mum walked towards me, and now she wasn’t alone. Her eyes followed a huge silver-grey dog playing around her. Its head was as high as her waist and she rested her hand on its silver-grey shoulders.
Mum looked at the dog and then she looked up at me.
“Stop right there, Cally Fisher!”
Mr Brown, the head teacher, and Mrs Brooks were running across the playing field.
Mrs Brooks shouted again, “Stay where you are! Don’t move!”
Her sunglasses bounced off her head and fell on the grass, but she kept coming.
And when I looked around to see where Mum had gone, the enormous dog came running right up close to me and I saw into his soft brown eyes. His ears were up and his curved tail swayed and he looked straight at me, like he was saying, “It’s you! I want to be with you!”
I thought, That dog’s not a ghost, it’s really real.
And just as Mr Brown came closer, the dog changed direction and galloped away. He raced around Mrs Brooks and snatched up her sunglasses and dropped them again, daring her to take them. I could hear her saying, “Nice doggy,” and, “There’s a good doggy,” and then, “Can somebody get some more help!”
His stride was so big nobody could catch him. By the time they were all red in the face and more people from the office had come out to help, the dog had jumped over the fence and run away with Mrs Brooks’s sunglasses.
Then Mrs Brooks had my elbow and was taking me back to her office.
“I’ll deal with this, Mr Brown,” she called. “What on earth did you think you were doing, Cally? I think we need to have another chat.”
But there wasn’t time. Daniel Bird was standing in the doorway of her office poking bits of Blu-tack into the door catch while he waited for his session.
“What’s she done now?” he said.
I still had a picture of Mum and the dog in my mind, clear and bright and beautiful. And all I could think was that they’d both come to me, without me even asking.
7.
I TOOK THE SPONSORSHIP FORM HOME. LUKE signed it. My brother’s thirteen. He looks like my mum; he’s got her thick brown hair and he’s just about as tall as she was. But he’s serious and boring.
I get on Luke’s nerves. I have to. He spends a lot of time in his room on his own, racing cars on his computer. His ambition is to beat someone called Sting who has the highest score. He tells me to shut up all the time; he can’t break records and reduce his lap times with me banging about in the background. Dad tells me to leave him alone. He says you have to give a man a bit of peace and quiet. I remember Mum used to say she liked noise in the house. She said, “When the kids are quiet, you know there’s trouble.” But Dad doesn’t seem to remember anything she used to say.
Luke calculated sponsoring me probably wouldn’t cost him much. But he said it would be worth every penny. “I wish it was forever,” he said.
Be careful what you wish for, that’s what Mum would have said.
“Dad, guess what?” Luke said, flinging the form miles away from my hands. “I’ve taken 1.4 seconds off my lap time.” He slid over the back of the sofa and sat next to Dad, slumping his feet on the table.
“Hmm?” said Dad.
“And that was in heavy rain.”
“Good for you,” Dad said, without looking away from the TV. “Take your feet off the table. And sit down, Cally. I’m trying to watch this.”
When Inspector Morse finished, I showed Dad the sponsorship form. He hesitated then read the details.
“Sponsored silence, eh?”
“Miss Steadman said I could do it.”
“She did?”
“And Mrs Brooks.”
“Good old Mrs Brooks,” he muttered. Which isn’t what he usually said about her. “Next Tuesday?”
“All day. Why?”
“Nothing. There’s a meeting at work. I’m going to be late home, that’s all.”
He wrote fifty pence in the box on the form that said how much you were going to pledge for each hour of silence. Then he looked at the telly again.
“Dad,” I said, “I saw Mum again. She came to school.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his eyebrows, shook his head.
“She brought a dog with her.”
Dad crossed out the fifty pence and changed it to a pound. “Time for bed,” he said.
I watched him flick the channels to find another detective programme. He liked mysteries; he liked to try to guess whodunnit.
8.
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK ON TUESDAY MORNING I LAY in bed thinking about my mum and the giant silver dog. In my daydream I said, “Mum, where are you?”
And she said, Hello, Cally, I’m right here.
And I said, “Where?”
And she said, About an inch away.
I felt her nearness, but I couldn’t see her. I opened my eyes.
I watched the dust fairies trapped in a stream of sunlight between the curtains. Little pieces of almost nothing that disappeared when the sun went in. Slowly and silently they turned, undecided about which way to go. They coasted and floated. I whispered to them because they were small and fragile. “Make up your mind,” I said. Then I blew on them and soon they were whirling
